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Hey all, just bought Affinity Photo a couple of hours ago and I must say I am impressed (in a good way) with the program so far. In the first hour I made one huge panorama from 7 large HDR images, also knocked the sky out and made it transparent. Will be using it in a 3D application as a backdrop in front of another background image. Anyways, Affinity Photo handled this all very well. (Massive image file, a tricky forest image with a lot of leaves) It is very fast for me. I have already used many of the features available to me, but one is missing, or I can't figure it out at any rate. The one main thing I do with a 2D program is fill selections with tileable textures (Raster images, JPG or PNG). I've watched many of the videos and cruzed through this forum, (also read a bit in the program's help) but I do not see that one anywhere. So I want to fill a selection with a raster image so that the area fills with tiled imagery. Since I am a 3D guy I paint on UV maps, a lot. I do paint directly on models more lately since my software is getting more advanced, but for something like the ground, or buildings, I UV map everything into islands and I paint them in 2D. I also paint normal's and bump, spectacular maps, etc, on layers in the same selection so they match up. I hope this is possible in AP, since I am sick and tired of Corel putting spam on my computer and I wish to switch to Affinity software full time. I think it is a bargain for the price, and it handles large files very well. Any suggestions on this type of workflow would be greatly appreciated. And it looks like I will be getting AD as well. I don't have a big need for a vector program, but it just looks too cool to pass up.

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  • Staff

Hi RibRoast,

 

Welcome to the Forums :)

 

We have the ability to set the Gradient Tool to Bitmap in Affinity Photo is that what you are looking for? 

 

You can find a tutorial video  covering this feature below

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfqnJ9Ns_Mc

 

Thanks

C

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

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So I want to fill a selection with a raster image so that the area fills with tiled imagery.

 

I am not sure I understand your intended workflow very well but as far as I know, the only way to do this in AP (or AD) is to apply a bitmap fill to a vector shape using the Gradient tool with "Extend" in the contextual menubar set either to Wrap or Mirror. Wrap tiles in the normal way & Mirror flips alternate tiles.

 

You can apply a gradient fill to a pixel layer but there are no "Extend" options that allow for tiling -- it always seems to be set to the equivalent of the vector bitmap fill "Repeat" setting (which sort of counterintuitively repeats the edge pixels instead of repeating the entire bitmap). 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I'm not familiar with UV mapping for 3D objects, however when I was looking for a way to do it for normal 2D images, I didn't get on with using the gradient tool set to bitmap because it doesn't tell you when your texture is at 100% actual size.  I found you had to just drag and guess, which I didn't like.  Sooo...

 

Alternative Method 1:
What I ended up doing instead was a pretty crude method of copy and paste, but using a really useful feature in Affinity Photo called 'Power Duplicate', where you can duplicate an object multiple times and it will automatically offset it for you.  There's a video HERE for Affinity Designer demonstrating 'Power Duplicate', but it works in Affinity Photo too.

 

1) Copy & Paste the tileable texture on a new layer

2) Press V (for the Move tool)

3) Press CTRL + J (Or Layer > Duplicate)

4) Move the tileable texture right so it snaps (green bar) to the right of the previous tile

5) Press CTRL + J and keep pressing CTRL + J until it fills the entire row

 

Once one row is done, you can repeat the same process, but with the entire row to fill the rest of the document. 
6) Hold the Shift key and select all the tiles in the first row

7) Press CTRL + J (Or Layer > Duplicate)

8) Move the tileable texture row down so it snaps (green bar) to the bottom of the previous row

9) Press CTRL + J and keep pressing CTRL + J until it fills the entire canvas

 

Then group them.
10) Select all those layers (Shift click top and bottom layers) and group them together (CTRL + G) and then rasterise the group

11) You can then add a layer mask and use normal layer masking techniques to hide/show the texture

 

In the real scenario I was creating a paper texture, but for this post I'll use simple black and white stripes as it's easier to see what's happening.

post-29590-0-23596900-1483460888_thumb.png

 

Alternative Method 2:
An alternative method is to use your texture with a brush.  Although this will be more tailored towards greyscale textures.

 

1) Go to the Brushes Pane, under 'Basic' Brushes double-click the large hard round brush to open the brush properties, then click the 'Duplicate' button at the bottom.  Close the properties box.

 

2) Go to the duplicate brush you just created at the bottom of the brushes list, double-click it to open the brush properties

 

3) In the 'General' tab, make sure Accumulation/Hardness/Flow are all set to 100%

 

4) In the 'Dynamics' tab, make sure everything it set to 'None'

 

5) In the 'Texture' tab, click 'Set Texture' and load your tileable texture

 

6) Set the 'Mode' to 'Final'.  Close the properties box.

 

7) Select the brush tool, adjust the brush size and start painting with the brush.  But you need to be careful to paint in one go, if you lift the mouse button and draw again, it will draw darker over the previous stroke.

 

Screenshot:

post-29590-0-52145400-1483460901_thumb.png

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I suggested the vector bitmap fill method because it is both non-destructive & very flexible -- you can apply different horizontal & vertical scale factors or lock the ratio to 1:1, rotate the bitmap as you want, & change the position of where the bitmap starts; & go back at any time & change any of this or even replace it with another bitmap.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I suggested the vector bitmap fill method because it is both non-destructive & very flexible -- you can apply different horizontal & vertical scale factors or lock the ratio to 1:1, rotate the bitmap as you want, & change the position of where the bitmap starts; & go back at any time & change any of this or even replace it with another bitmap.

 

Using that method, if you have a 500px X 500px seamless tile and you want to fill a 5250px X 3500px canvas, how do you set it so that the texture is used at exactly 100% the original size without any scaling?

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I'm not familiar with UV mapping for 3D objects, however when I was looking for a way to do it for normal 2D images, I didn't get on with using the gradient tool set to bitmap because it doesn't tell you when your texture is at 100% actual size.  I found you had to just drag and guess, which I didn't like.  Sooo...

 

 

Hi Sima,

Thanks for your feedback. This is a limitation for which i already filled an improvement request some time ago (if i'm not mistaken). I will check this out and bump it or fill it again in case i'm wrong.

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Not sure I understand exactly what you 3D guys do but this video shows repeating patterns using symbols, which may (or not) be useful

 

PS It's for AD not AP

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsSmx1XcB8A

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Sounds a bit uncomfortable, but I will try your suggestions and get back to you all. The thing is I've already spent hours creating tile-able textures with matching normal maps and bump, specular, etc and they have to match up perfectly or its junk. Hate to promote Paint Shop Pro but this feature is located in the bucket fill tool, so its just a one click operation. Would not have expected to find this in the gradient tool. Actually, that method does not tile, or preserve the size of the texture being painted with. Also it is important that the fill is performed on a selection as there will be many different parts of the model on the UV map. For instance a door for a building would have six rectangles for the sides, front, back etc plus a shape for the hinges and doorknob on the same UV map. I want to apply a tile-able texture to the different parts (simplified example). I select a shape, fill it with a texture and on another layer I fill the same selection with the matching normal map texture, and so on. I also save the selections to the alpha channel, which AP does do. The layers get exported individually in the end and used in a 3D render. At any rate, I am very happy with the software so far. The reference pallet for cloning is a pure joy, been using it today, there is a lot to like here. Compared to my "other" 2D application, AP can handle very large files and not bog down, gotta love that as well. I found this program after searching all over the web for a panorama stitching application that won't break the bank, yet do a decent job. My usual panorama software is having issues with Win 10. I was surprised to find that not only can AP do a very nice job with my pano's but the background removal tools are superior and the cloning tools are much better as well. I'm looking forward to AP and Filter Forge becoming compatible, and if some sort of bucket fill for tile-able textures (a flood fill for raster images, would not necessarily have to be a tiling image)  where to be implemented, AP would be the only paint program I would need. I would like to keep everything in Affinity's native file format right up to final export if possible. Thanks to everyone who responded to my query. I will be experimenting on my own as well, trying to push the limits of this program, and I will share whatever I learn back to this community.

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